Xperia Z5 Premium vs. iPhone 6 Plus – Sony’s Chance To Beat Apple

BY Lestoc Costea /September 10, 2015 10:16 am

Sony worked on a new line of Xperia Z phones and among the three smartphones is a “Premium” version with high-tier specs. This is Sony’s successful comeback to the mobile industry and we believe that the Xperia Z5 Premium will attract many buyers. But, is it better than Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus phablet?

Designs

The Xperia Z5 Premium has a more premium design than the previous models, featuring a “frosted” glass (mirror-like) back and shiny metal accents on the sides, the edges are more rounded; the device is water and dust resistant and has a fingerprint scanner on the right handed side. Its dimensions are 154.4 x 75.8 x 7.8 mm and it weights 180 grams.

The iPhone 6 Plus is a bit taller, slimmer, but lighter, measuring 158.1 x 77.8 x 7.1 mm and weighting 172 grams. It has a fingerprint scanner (Touch ID), but it’s located below the screen, hidden inside the home button. Its chassis is made of anodized aluminum and the screen-to-body size ratio is 67.91%, being behind the Z5 Premium, whose screen occupies 71.10% of the front panel.

Displays

Both devices have large screens measuring 5.5-inch, but the Xperia Z5 Premium uses an IPS LCD display with a QHD resolution of 2160 by 3840 pixels, which gives an enormous pixel density of 806ppi. Sony integrated its TRILUMINOS technology on board and the X-Reality for Mobile one, offering more accurate colors and better viewing angles.

The iPhone 6 Plus has an IPS LCD display with Full HD resolution, supporting half of Z5 Premium’s pixel density, which means that it’s not that sharp. But the contrast, brightness, gamma, color temperature and accuracy are excellent, even with these lower numbers.

Hardware

The iPhone 6 Plus is relatively old – it turned 1 year in September. Apple equipped it with an A8 dual-core 1.4GHz processor which had great results in single-core benchmarks and tests. This configuration requires only 1GB of RAM and the storage options are 16, 64, or 128GB, which are unexpandable. The device works flawlessly thanks to iOS 8’s optimization.

The Xperia Z5 Premium comes with the most powerful Qualcomm chipset – Snapdragon 810, which is powered by a two quad core processors with heating issues. They are clocked at 1.5 GHz and 2 GHz, and they perform very well for a limited time – because when opening more applications and using them simultaneously, the hardware heats up, affecting the battery life. This phablet supports 3GB of RAM and has an internal memory of 32GB, which supports expansion up to 200GB.

Cameras

The Xperia Z5 Premium has a superior rear camera with a resolution of 23MP and a 1/2.3″ wide-angle Exmor RS sensor. This camera hast the fastest autofocusing feature, which can lock down the focal point in 0.03 seconds, because it has 192 focus points. It supports a light sensitivity of up to ISO12800, but it lacks optical image stabilization. However, Sony used Steady Shot, a feature which will help the camera take better videos. The Z5 Premium is able to record and play 4K videos.

The iPhone 6 Plus has an 8MP rear camera with an f/2.2 aperture and a sensor with a size of 1/3″, which boasts 1.5 μm pixels. For the first time, Apple integrated optical image stabilization and the images are clearer.

The front camera of the Z5 Premium is 5MP, beating the 1.2MP front-facing camera of the iPhone 6 Plus.